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Our values

Our values were created by a full staff engagement exercise following one-to-ones and small group interviews with over 150 staff members, a series of larger workshops and finally a Trust Board discussion.

Our values

Our three values statements are:

Patients first

Patients and families will be at the heart of what we do and their experience within the hospital, and their perception of the Trust, will be our measure of success.

Working together

Our clinical teams will provide services to patients and are crucial to our success. We have launched a leadership strategy that ensures our clinical management teams are engaged in the day-to-day management and governance of the Trust.

Always improving

Our growing reputation in research and development and our approach to education and training will continue to incorporate new ideas, technologies and greater efficiencies in the services we provide

Living our values every day

We aim to make these values ‘what we do’ – to inspire, develop and support every one of us to live our values; every patient, every colleague, every day.

These values are about us all helping each other to deliver great patient experience more consistently – involving people who use our services, their families, carers, staff and partners in continuing to improve the experience people have using and delivering our services.

Each ward, department or service will exhibit different behaviours in living these values every day. In order to identify them, champions are being recruited to work with these groups to articulate, agree and display them as well as live them. We will also teach them to challenge, in a supportive way, behaviours that contravene our values. The more people know and understand what our values are, the more they are prompted into living them on a day-to-day basis.

The values are being embedded in the Trust in many different ways. Some are already in place, and others are a work-in-progress:

Communication – we regularly review our communication, both with each other and also with our patients. If we aren’t using our values in the way we talk and write, we aren’t really living them.

Recruitment – our values will be integrated into our recruitment and selection processes so our prospective employees are aware of them before they even start with us.

Induction – all new staff members must attend our Trust induction programme shortly after joining us. The values are heavily embedded in this programme, to show staff members how they link to their every day working lives.

Training – all our training courses are reviewed to ensure our values are identified in the new skills learned.

Appraisals – objective-setting at appraisals will be linked to our values so staff members understand how their behaviour and outcomes indicate their adherence to them.

Recognition – Hospital Heroes, our staff recognition scheme, is judged including our values as the criteria. That way, the values and behaviours we set store by are always at the forefront.